In February, a famine was declared in South Sudan. And in 2016, the media frequently linked the conflict in Syria to the country’s extreme drought. What do we know about the complex relationship between climate change and conflict, particularly resource-based conflicts? Climate change affects communities in a way that makes them chaotic and difficult to…
You’ve had experience stimulating investment in different countries, from Paraguay to Palestine. What are some ways that you’ve attracted investors in your career? I’ve been able to work directly with businesses to attract investment on a few different projects, and this is frequently one of my favorite project components. For example, both the USAID Poverty…
“Reducing corruption stands at the heart of the recently established Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).” The World Bank made this statement in its November 2016 brief on anti-corruption, and the concept doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise. Corruption, inefficiency, and lack of transparency often hurt vulnerable groups the most, putting up barriers and distorting access to…
It’s no secret that agriculture is an important sector in the field of international development. The presence of farming, agricultural technologies, and agriculture policy is a certainty in nearly every country around the globe. Within this sector there are some 500 million smallholder farms worldwide; more than 2 billion people depend on them for their…
Modern secured transaction laws increase the availability of credit and reduce its cost, by ensuring that lenders can collect debt and enforce their rights in movable property collateral through a timely and inexpensive process. From a global perspective, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is significantly behind in pursuing and operationalizing reforms to…
Why is social inclusion important for the development of Indonesia? Indonesia is a big country with some of the greatest diversity in the world. Government development programs have made significant progress on several parameters, such as human development as well as gender development indexes. Women and girls have better access to education, health facilities, and…
After work, once every couple of months, I have the luxury of making my way across town to the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) Washington, D.C. Affiliate meeting to spend a couple of hours eating lukewarm Peruvian chicken and discussing issues affecting midwives at the local and national level. It’s not the meetings themselves that…
Chemonics is implementing public sector reform projects across all regions and in most sectors. Whether it is improving the effectiveness of institutions of accountability in Tanzania or working with the Ministry of Education in Zambia to improve learner performance, we use a participatory approach to engage counterparts charged with providing services of all shapes and…
The landmark 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) Paris Agreement recognized the need for a multi-pronged approach to reach the ambitious development goals set by 195 countries, 34 of which are in Asia. With one-third of the world’s total population, Asia is increasingly vulnerable to climate change due to its low-lying, heavily populated coastlines and dependency…
USAID’s recent Women’s Economic Empowerment and Equality Workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa, brought together nearly 100 men and women dedicated to advancing women’s economic empowerment and equality throughout Africa and beyond. Over a period of two and a half days, we discussed USAID’s new draft Framework to Promote Women’s Economic Empowerment and Equality, listened to…
Malaria, transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito, killed an estimated 438,000 people in 2015, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. While this is still an unacceptable situation for an entirely preventable disease, the 2015 mortality figure actually represents a 48 percent decrease over the past fifteen years. Much of this progress has been through tremendous scale-up of frontline…
This blog post was originally published by Digital Globe. Over three years of internal conflict in South Sudan has led to severe food and nutrition insecurity. Nearly one-third of the population is in need of emergency food assistance, and the spread of violence has displaced 3.4 million people across South Sudan and into neighboring countries…